You are here

Expara GSB Fund (EGSB)

Expara GSB Fund (EGSB)

Thailand’s Government Savings Bank (GSB), with backing from the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), has formally launched two investment vehicles at 1.5 billion baht (more than $44 million) to invest in the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These are the sub-funds of the SMEs Private Equity Trust Fund that the state-owned bank proposed earlier in 2016. Expara Thailand has been designated as the manager for SMEs Private Equity Trust Fund by the Government Savings Bank (GSB) of Thailand.

The trust fund will primarily invest in fintech, while it will also look at other advanced ICT areas within Thailand. The investment vehicle was launched in the second quarter of 2017. It will be actively investing for a period of 4-5 years. This is the third SMEs Private Equity Trust Fund launched in Thailand, after two previous initiatives were launched in 2016 by Thailand’s SME Bank and Krungthai Bank in collaboration with the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) and National Science and Technology Development Agency. The vehicle will provide both seed funding for startups as well as later stage investments in high growth SMEs and follow-on investments in later-stage start-ups.

Expara expanded its Thailand-based team and opened a second office located at Park Venture Ecoplex to support the fund’s operations. Douglas Abrams, Expara’s Managing Director is very excited about the Thai startup and venture capital market in both the near and long terms and look forward to expanding investment activity in Thailand. He believes that the Thai market is poised for tremendous growth with an increasing number of sophisticated entrepreneurs, world-class tech infrastructure such as payments and a highly digital young population, catalysed by public sector support for the venture capital industry. Managing the SME Trust Fund is a great next step in Expara’s regional strategy, and Expara is extremely please to be working with GSB to help create successful companies and drive the growth of the enterprise ecosystem in Thailand.